


Transfusion

by Arati_Mhevet



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29030019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arati_Mhevet/pseuds/Arati_Mhevet
Summary: After 'The Wire'. Why does Nurse Jabara take such care with the resident Cardassian?
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 20
Kudos: 77





	Transfusion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlphaCygni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaCygni/gifts).



**Transfusion**

Jabara was alone in the infirmary when the afternoon patient arrived, soft-footed as ever. “Hello, Garak,” she said, not looking up from her reading.

“Esla,” he said. “And how are you today?”

Jabara, one eye still on the contents of the PADD, stood up and gestured him through. “I’m well. Shall we get started?”

He followed her through to the back. The room was already warm; she’d adjusted the temperature an hour or two ago so that it would be comfortable for him by the time he arrived, and she dimmed the lights further as they entered. Familiar by now with the procedure, he went straight over to the biobed, and sat down with a sigh on the edge. He rolled up the sleeve on his left arm, conspicuously not watching as she prepped the equipment. So. Tense today.

“You don’t like doctors, do you?” she said, somewhat wickedly, tapping his shoulder so that he would lie back on the bed.

Garak stretched out, closed his eyes, and offered his left arm. His right hand was placed upon his chest, for comfort, perhaps, or reassurance. “Esla, you know quite well that I _adore_ doctors.”

“Ah, so it’s nurses that are the problem.” She took his blood pressure and checked his respiration. All within acceptable parameters, although she wished he could relax. Perhaps a little backchat would help. “And after all we’ve been through together. I’m hurt.”

“I adore nurses too,” he said. No, his heart wasn’t in the game today, although he did try to rally. “Well, I adore _you_ , obviously, for reasons well beyond my comprehension.”

“That’s because I can make life very uncomfortable for you.” She sterilised the area on his arm. “Not doctors, not nurses…”

“I don’t like infirmaries,” he said sharply. “I don’t like medical procedures, and I particularly don’t like needles.”

She found the vein and put it in. “You get used to it.”

His hand pressed down upon his chest and he pushed out a breath. “I’d rather not.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, briskly, watching the monitor. “You must be feeling better for all this.”

“Every week for a month now I have come here and two hours later I’ve left with a sore arm,” he complained. “How much better do you think that makes me feel?”

“An entirely new therapy, devised by Doctor Bashir, just for you—”

“I am naturally _profoundly_ grateful for the doctor’s attention.” A beat. “And yours.”

That was more like it. “You’re welcome,” she said, patting his hand.

“Coming here each week to have you jab a needle into me is the cornerstone of my social diary.” His eyes flicked open. “I’m not joking.”

“Rubbish,” she said. “I know for a fact you’re meeting Julian for lunch tomorrow to discuss _Bleak House_.”

“Huh. Have you read _Bleak House_?”

“Of course not. I’m much too busy and important.”

“Lucky you.” He took a deep breath, let it out again slowly. He really wasn’t happy today. Gently, she touched his cheek. “Try to relax, Garak.”

“Hmm.”

“Look at me.” He obeyed, and she did the retinal scans. “How are the headaches?”

“Fine,” he said.

“‘Fine’ tells me nothing,” she said.

“Then offer me a set of appropriate metrics.”

“All right, on a scale of ‘barely registering’ to ‘really quite debilitating’, where would you put them?”

“I would call them ‘not debilitating’.”

“Mm, ‘not debilitating’ is not the same as ‘fine’. Are the pills still helping?”

“Yes.”

“Because we can adjust them. But you need to _tell_ me if they’re not working, because although I am a talented medical professional, I can’t in fact read your mind—”

“The headache pills are working fine. When they don’t work, I go to bed.”

She did not miss the exclusivity of that. As always, with Garak, you had to listen to what wasn’t said. “What about the other pills?”

“I feel nowhere near as nauseated as I did this time last week, for which I am profoundly grateful. I was sick of eating soup.”

He did seem to have put a little weight back on. Good. He’d looked ghastly when he’d left the infirmary; far too thin. Old, and frail. She didn’t say this. He was terribly vain.

“And?” she prompted. Bashir had sent him on his way with three types of medication. _Do you feel sad, tearful, hopeless, worthless? Are you having trouble eating, sleeping, feeling? Are you easily irritated? Have you lost interest or pleasure in activities which previously held your interest or brought pleasure?_

“The rest,” he said, shortly, “is my business.”

Easily irritated, that was for sure. She kept on, regardless. “Because we can adjust those too.”

He opened his eyes and looked straight at her. A rather withering – albeit not wholly hostile – look. _Really, Esla?_ And what, in fact, could she meaningfully adjust? She could turn up the heat in here and turn down the lights. She could throw one-liners at him in the hope he’d bat some back. But she couldn’t transport him home and she couldn’t stop him being Cardassian. He said, “They’re fine as they are.”

“Hmm.” She checked the monitor again. “Well, you’re set up, so all you need to do is lie there quietly and think nice thoughts. I’m going to get a cup of tea. Do you want one?”

He shook his head. “Later, maybe.”

She covered him with the heated blanket, and went out to the replicator. When she came back, his eyes were closed, and he seemed to have unwound a little. She sat in the chair opposite, and picked up her PADD. Sometimes they talked; sometimes he fell asleep. Today he seemed to want to rest. It would do him good, she thought. Might even help with his snappishness. She turned back to the PADD. After a minute or two, she looked up to see him staring at her. Bright blue eyes unblinking in the dim light. “Something the matter, Garak?”

“No… I was just wondering what you were reading.” His lips twitched. “Tell me it’s _Bleak House_.”

“It’s not _Bleak House_.”

“Oh, you should surely read it next. Much better than the usual rubbish he foists on me.” He considered that. “Slightly better than the usual rubbish he foists on me. So what _are_ you reading?”

“I’m not reading anything now. I’m talking to you.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt your afternoon’s leisure with my healthcare requirements.”

“If you must know, it’s research for a paper I’m writing.”

“Research?” That piqued his interest. “What kind of research?”

She had, in fact, been reading up on Cardassian physiology. Bashir’s contact on Cardassia – whoever that was – had sent back a very full set of files, far more than was immediately required. And O’Brien had got busy cracking open the databanks left behind. From famine to feast. “Oh,” she said, “this and that.”

“‘This and that’ won’t win you the Carrington Prize, Nurse Jabara,” he said sternly.

“I’m not aiming for the Carrington Prize, Mister Garak. I’m aiming for medical school.”

“You’re applying to medical school?” He looked surprised. “You’re going to become a doctor?”

“Next year, if all goes well. In Ashalla.”

“You’ll be leaving us?” He seemed genuinely taken aback.

Touched, she said, “I can’t stay here forever.”

“Well, indeed, who would want to stay here forever? But I didn’t know that this was your ambition! To become a doctor…” His eyes gleamed. “Has our brilliant young Starfleet friend made such an impression?”

Jabara snorted. “I wanted to become a doctor long before I met Julian Bashir.”

“Yet you never did anything about it before?”

“It wasn’t possible,” she said, “for me to train to be a doctor before.”

“No?”

“On Bajor? At the end of the Occupation?”

“Ah,” he said. “No. I suppose not.”

“Although my field medicine is excellent.”

“I imagine it would be.” He sighed. “Career changes can present some challenges, I understand, but I do hope all goes well. I mean that quite sincerely.”

“So you didn’t have a burning childhood ambition to become a tailor?”

“Would you be amazed to hear not?”

She held the PADD up in front of her, but she didn’t try reading. Sure enough, he soon spoke again. 

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been trying to piece together everything that happened during the days that I was sick. There are some gaps in my memory.”

“That’s perfectly natural. You weren’t very well—”

“I don’t like having gaps in my memory.”

She sighed and put the PADD down. “Well, fortunately for everyone concerned, I was keeping detailed notes. What do you want to know?”

“Not the gory details: I doubt they’re particularly edifying. But there’s one thing that puzzles me. When our dear friend the doctor took himself off to Cardassian space, he was away… how long?”

“Fifty-one hours,” she said. “Give or take.”

“A little under two days… Yes, that’s about the quickest he could have done the trip… I don’t remember much from those two days—”

“You know, Garak, you really were very sick.” Dying, in fact. But he knew that.

“I know,” he said. “But what I do remember is that whenever I opened my eyes, I saw you.”

“So?”

“Two days,” he said, thoughtfully. “I’ll be the first to admit that I was hardly at my most lucid – but surely I should have seen someone other than your good self. Esla, tell me – were you here the entire time?”

She had indeed been here the entire time. She’d slept on and off in this chair, in fact, and she hadn’t left the infirmary. She tilted her head.

“I thought so,” he said. “I suppose my next question is ‘why’?”

“What do you want me to say? That there were dozens of people clamouring to help?”

He gave a short laugh. “I know quite well why nobody else was here! Who wants to go near the spoonhead?”

She shook her head. “That’s not fair. That’s not how it was.”

“No?”

“No.”

“If you say so.” He sniffed. “But that wasn’t, in fact, my question. What I wanted to know was – why did _you_ stay?”

“Somebody had to.”

“So you _were_ the only one willing?”

She sighed. Her colleagues hadn’t been keen to help, that was true. One or two had refused point blank to go near him. And since she wouldn’t force them, and she didn’t care to report them to Bashir, the task had, by default, largely fallen to her. But there had certainly been help. Kolis had taken over her other duties. Reli had come past regularly to check how she was doing, and, about forty hours in, Anata had offered to take over. But she’d refused.

“Look, Garak, what does it matter? There were plenty of people around—”

“So you _didn’t_ have to stay the whole time?”

“No…” All those offers of help, and she’d refused. Because she wanted to be _sure_ … Not that she thought they would harm him, or withhold treatment, but because on some level, she did not believe that they cared enough. That way lay mistakes, and Jabara knew that she would never forgive herself, if he died on her watch.

“And yet you did. All I’m asking is – why?”

She’d wondered that herself a few times, during those awful couple of days, looking down at his grey ridged face, pinched with pain and fear, the face of childhood nightmare and adulthood horror… “Look, it’s how it worked out, that’s all. Nothing more to say. And now I’d really like to get on with my reading—”

“Esla. Please. Humour me.”

“Humour you?” she said. _All right, I’ll humour you._ She set the PADD square upon her lap. “I’ll assume you were on Bajor at some point, Garak. I’ll assume I only need to sketch the scene. A roadblock in Ashalla. Eight trigger-happy Cardassian foot-soldiers and their very young glinn. A skimmer, unwilling to stop. Resistance? Who knows… Disruptor fire. Eight Bajoran civilians killed outright. Two young boys – brothers, I think – badly injured. Can you picture this scene?”

“All too easily,” he murmured.

“There was a medic on the spot. Cardassian. She came forward to help. Knelt on the ground next to the younger boy and treated him. The soldiers…”

“They stopped her, I imagine.”

“No. No… They let her get on with it. She was about to help the older boy, when someone arrived. Another Cardassian. No uniform, but everyone jumped to attention. He ordered her to stop. She wouldn’t. He ordered her again. She refused again. He ordered one of the soldiers to arrest her. They weren’t sure what to do at first. But then the glinn made his decision. Arrested her…” Jabara stopped. There’d been a lot of noise, that day, but she remembered that doctor, screaming as her own people dragged her away. Aware of Garak’s eyes on her, she said, “Anyway. That’s why I don’t let anything interfere with the work. Nothing should interfere with the work.”

Garak looked down at the PADD abandoned in her lap. “My apologies,” he said. “I shouldn’t have… Perhaps, I should mind my own business, Esla, and let you get on with yours.” He closed his eyes. She watched his shoulders slump, his face fall, the years weigh suddenly heavily upon him. After a while, he sighed, and settled, and eventually dozed.

Jabara thought about that doctor. She’d thought about her a lot over the years. Wondered if she’d survived whatever punishment must have come her way. She glanced over at Garak. Did he know she’d heard that last conversation with Bashir? Obsidian Order. Here. As if she would let any of her colleagues near him…

Jabara went back to her reading. After about an hour, she stood up, quietly, took the PADD to her desk, and went to the replicator. Waking him, gently, she said, “Here’s that cup of tea.”

He took the mug, and drank slowly and carefully, watching as she removed the needle and cleaned up. She checked his temperature (all fine) and ran the dermal regenerator over his arm. “There,” she said. “Good as new.”

He finished his tea, and she took the cup so that he could roll his sleeve back down. “Well,” he said, coming round to sit on the side of the bed. “An entertaining diversion, as ever. And now back to work…”

“If I were you,” she said, “I’d go home and have a nap. And you know the drill. Back here immediately if you feel—”

“Yes, yes,” he said, following her out, “any allergic reactions, shortness of breath, chest pain, back pain… You realise I have back pain almost all the time from being hunched over that cursed sewing machine?”

“I didn’t know, no,” she replied, sitting behind her desk, “because you’ve never told me. I assumed you did, and now you’ve mentioned it I can suggest some simple exercises which might help—”

“I’m sure you can.”

“Standing up frequently and moving around won’t do you any harm.”

“Laps of the Promenade it is, then.”

She laughed. “Go away, Garak! I’ll see you next week.”

He smiled, tilted his head, and went on his way. She watched him stand for a moment outside the infirmary, clearly pondering his next move. Right would take him to the shop; left to the nearest turbolift and his quarters. To her surprise, he went left. Good. You couldn’t take care of them when they didn’t take care of themselves. If they didn’t want to take care of themselves.

Jabara picked up her PADD. Underneath was a small box, wrapped in silver foil and purple ribbons. Chocolates. He did this every time. Brought a small gift, hid it somehow on her desk when she wasn’t looking. She had no idea how, but she wasn’t complaining. She opened the box of chocolates, popped one in her mouth, and went back to work.

* * *

_26 th-27th January 2021_

**Author's Note:**

> For AlphaCygni, who wanted to see Jabara snarking at Garak for a whole fic.
> 
> And with grateful thanks, as ever, to Skittles_Walter.


End file.
